"The scope involves almost everything of a financial nature around the NBA," he says. "If we're not directly responsible, we're monitoring the results. The important business metrics range from game attendance to global merchandise sales. Our job is to be sure the businesses are delivering the performance we expect."

 

Team sports have long been a part of Richard's life. As an African-American kid growing up in East Orange, he was surrounded by "hoops" culture. So naturally, he started playing ... ice hockey. "I was in the fourth grade," Richard says. "A friend of a friend of my family asked if I wanted to try out. I'd never been on skates."

 

He tried it and liked it -- well enough to play club hockey while attending public schools in East Orange, and through high school at Seton Hall Prep. "It wasn't always convenient," he says. "I was on traveling teams. I remember practices in Monsey, New York, at 10 or 11 at night. My grandfather, Leroy, and my mother, Shirley, made it possible."

 

Seton Hall Prep was a great place for a young hockey player, and also provided Richard with his first taste of accounting. "I took an accounting class and it came easily to me. I thought it might be a good field to pursue if my athletic aspirations weren't met. I went to college with that in mind."

 

Richard attended Northeastern University, a strong hockey school. "Unfortunately, I broke my arm the summer before going to school. I wasn't really ready, but I cut my cast off to try out. I didn't do well. Turns out Plan B became Plan A."

 

From the start, he majored in accounting. Northeastern is a "co-op" school. "It's a five-year program," Richard explains. "You get one quarter off in your freshman year. The rest of the five years, you're either at school or working."

 

His co-op jobs were all accounting-related, from bookkeeping in small companies to working with major public firms. After college, he joined Touche Ross in New York. He got his CPA in 1987, earned an M.B.A. from Columbia and left Deloitte & Touche in 1995 as a senior manager. Richard's "industry" experience includes two years at AT&T, heading a work group that managed many of the financial aspects of the NCR and Lucent Technologies spin-offs, and a year at Citibank.

 

Is there a difference between working for a telecommunications or financial services giant and being involved in a sports/entertainment business?

 

"No doubt about it," Richard says. "The product is exciting, different. That's reflected in the business. My job requires the same skill set I needed to be successful at Deloitte, AT&T and Citibank. But working here -- it's more fun."

 

Richard recognizes that mentoring and the influence of organizations such as the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) were crucial to his own career success. "I feel I have a special responsibility," he says. "In college, I worked with the Big Brothers Big Sisters. Here in New Jersey, I've been involved with young people who are at risk -- who've had brushes with the law -- to mentor them."

 

He served as president of the North Jersey chapter of NABA for more than two years and recalls a young man he met as part of a mentoring program in 1994. "We're still close to this day," he says. "It's tremendously important for young people to meet successful people in business."

Richard lives in South Orange with Rhonda, his wife of nearly two years. And the African-American kid from East Orange is without question a success story. When asked about his aspirations, Richard responds, "more growth, I hope, more leadership responsibility and more direct, bottom-line accountability."